Mama's Words... my own thoughts, and the state of the blog.

I've found it amusing when people ask, "So how was your trip home?…", or "How are you enjoying being home? What is it like?" ... Dear people. I love them to the hilt, but I never can decide how to answer. My verbal thoughts point blank would be along the lines of, "Home…feel…how do I feel…well…uh, you mean this burning of my throat? the heaviness inside and feeling of choking? The sudden bursts of crying - and then wondering why I'm doing that at all, because I'm so ridiculously happy being married to my amazing man…? That's how I feel."
But of course, you don't say that. I reply in terms that can be understood "Great! Good to see everyone. Sure - kind of strange after such a big change."
Every bride who's moved from a wonderful home has felt a little this way, I think.
 It's been two months - two wonderful months that I've been married. Two months of discovering how much laughter, pleasure, sweetness, mixtures of joy and sorrow, adventure, comforting companionship and beauty there is in marriage. Two months of change. Two months of unpacking, meeting new people, seeing new places, figuring out how to thrive 1200 miles and 20 hours away from what I've always known as home.  I feel raw. Raw from change. It's unrealistic to say I don't miss home; but I also see, plain as day that I've been given the beautiful beginnings of a home, a family, a new life.

She was sitting across from me at the booth. I'd had a lump in my throat all week. Now was my last day home, and Mama had set aside some time for "Real Talk". She was saying,
"...Sort of like what I've said, 'Don't wait for normal,' well,  Don't wait for tomorrow to settle your home and make it what you want. Another big thing to remember is that we are not promised tomorrow. You have to Endeavor today.




These two months I've gone back and read every scrap of advice I could find from Mama and others, but especially Mama.
"It's time to get your hammer'n nails out and get busy.  Get busy on what you can do."
So here's to a new phase of life, and doing what I can, today.

This morning I heard the sink running, plates and pots clanging. JB was washing my three day pile up of dirty dishes. I've been blessed. No matter what, I've already been blessed.
A man like that comes straight from the windows of heaven.

Mama and Abe

i know our cats just gotta wonder sometimes.

our band, of one night in which Abrum played his favorite Ranchero music, and we three girls danced around for half an hour, then followed Abe outside with yips and howls.  

yes, law. Mama's peach cobbler. 

JB, my Man. 

my gift and husband and best friend.

{While this blog will remain mostly for entries concerning Stories of the Grey Submarine, I will, as I have been wont to do in the past, enter my own thoughts and updates, when the notion takes me.}

This week I've barely thought in words at all .  It's been in shapes, colors, patterns and textures. Analyzation does that for me.  Is it like that for everyone? If I analyze throughout the day, I feel exhausted and it's hard to make thoughts fit into words…Words seem confining and claustrophobic at the end of a day of analyzation.  I think it's because our minds actually do wander more when thinking in shapes and lines and colors and uses a part of the brain that doesn't get to go roaming when thinking in words.
Well, anyhow, one of my goals is to blog more, simply because it exercises the will and thought of writing. Mama also sat me down and told me I should. So here's to two days of organization and cleaning.  Now I am at peace with my room and my drawers. Now I feel like I can actually work.

Daddy has been talking about living an Abundant life in Christ.  He says one way to do it is to be thankful…Thankfulness opens our eyes to the many blessings God gives us every day. I want to be more thankful…I've found that the prayers I pray consisting only of thanking God leave me refreshed and thinking about God's goodness. Need to do that more.

Here's what I started and didn't finish because that day was full of family and fast walking and food and celebrating and poetry as we celebrated Milly's birthday party…

From Saturday::
On this morning's walk I met Jeb and Wilma. {Jeb, being a very small dog with an intensely squished face and Wilma being a very large cat with a white bib and crimped tail. } I don't know why, but something about those names being said together has made me smile all day.  There was a human too, that I met, whose name I do not know. He was such a memorable human, however, that he joined the vast cast of Dicken's Characters in my mind and served in this morning's role as the keeper of a trinket shop who yelled at his pets in the most endearing way.
I say endearing, for it was the kind of yell that insures the human that the other human is completely on your side and completely put out with his pets.  On the other hand, it equally insures the pets that the familiar yell is one their master uses to display how adorably mischievous and rebellious they are, and that they're not expected to heed the commands at all.
Hence, it is a happy situation for both humans and pets: the human feels protected and acknowledged, while the pets feel doted on and proud of their success in misbehaving again.

Happy Wednesday!

{and writing "Wednesday" makes me smile because it reminds me of last wednesday night when we were at church.  Bro Petroff, with his huge shoulders and grizzly beard came over to me. Quiet Bro Petroff with huge arms and hands of iron an expression to match it, walked over to me and said,
"Yo! G!  You know what day it is?!"
"uh, the 15th?"
Bro Petroff used one of his iron hands to swat my shoulder as he said emphatically,
"It's HUMPDAAAAY!!!!"  And he walked off laughing the Bro Petroff Laugh that a person would know any day, any time if a person's ever heard it before.

happy birthday to a heroine

"Oh honey, there's not a day goes by but that I miss him," she said in answer to my question.
Grandmama has a comforting way of turning from one thing to another in her kitchen.  Every drawer and shelf and pan knows the long felt touch of her strong, small hands. I stood leaning on the doorway as she moved about the little space. She was making pie crusts and roasts and would turn from counter to stove poking and checking the meat, then she'd turn again to stir and roll the dough.
"We were best buddies.  We did everything together.  Sometimes it's funny to me because we were so different, but I knew God had his hand in that match.  You know, when you think about him coming all the way from Spain at only 8 years old, and how we even met - why - it's a miracle we even DID meet!  He was a night owl, you know, so we'd be in bed and it'd be late late at night and he'd have the lamp on reading. He slept on that side near the window because it had a lamp.  Usually he'd want to talk and talk before I ever went to sleep. That was our time, you know, because the kids would be in bed and that's really the only quiet time we had!" She chuckled.  Grandmama has the merriest chuckle and she does it so often that she seems to sprinkle her own life and others with that merry-ness.
"He loved to read the Bible and he'd read it into the night - sometimes until three o'clock in the morning!  And he got excited - you know - so he'd wake me up and say 'Patty, you have got to hear this!'
Sometimes it feels like years ago when he died, but most of the time it feels like yesterday.  But I don't let myself dwell on it except for one day in the year and that day I'll let myself think about it and look at photos and read our letters. I like watching the video of his funeral.  He always said "I don't want there to be moping around and crying at my funeral. I want it to be a celebration.  Feed everybody barbecue and sing songs and have some fellowship. That's what I want."

Grandmama is eighty-four today.  She's lived seventeen years without Granddaddy, and from the moment she lost him, she continued to spend her time loving God and serving others. So much of Grandmama was Granddaddy, but she's been a wonderful example of joy through sorrow and beauty through pain.

We were lying on her bed one night not too long ago. {Granddaddy eventually converted her to a night owl and now she sleeps on his side by the lamp.} She was reading - she is always reading something - and said,
"I never thought I'd live to be seventy! So I kinda just laugh every birthday when I get a year older. 'Ah, well!' I say, 'If I'm still breathin' there must be a reason!'.  I'm happy to be living. I just pray that as long as I am alive God will grant me a zest for life.  Some people lose that, you know, as they get older.
He's still blessing me. I have everything I need."

That's what I want to be like... She's the happiest, contended-est person I know, and if you know her, you know that.

~~~ Happy Birthday, Grandmama ~~~

"You know, I remember seeing old people when I was young and thinking, 'My, that person must feel very old. But you never do! You just keep seeing the reflection in the mirror growing more wrinkled and white haired and you think 'Well, my body isn't wanting to do such and such anymore', but you never feel old. I almost gasped one day when I looked in the mirror. I thought 'Who's that old person?' And then of course I saw it was me!"  She laughed that funny, happy laugh and it made me think what a funny Bender of Things Time is.  Grandmama feels 17, and still could be, 

that Bright Soul, not in maturity, but in spirit. 

She's really, quite delightfully,

 Spunky.

on words

They're just consonants and vowels.  Just sounds organized into frameworks we call words.
What do they matter? But so much of our world is affected by words. Words from the President to the Nation, from Preachers to congregations, from Daddies and Mamas to children, from children to friends and siblings.   Words everywhere.  We couldn't live a normal day without them.
Perhaps I am more affected by them than others. But I think not.  If they are gentle, curious and encouraging, I want to do better and feel loved and am inspired by them. If they are hard, edgy, and said thinly and with annoyance or anger, it's hard to think of anything else.
Words are huge. Strange things, and powerful. There are some thing in the every day carrying out of things that can take little or no extra time, but that can affect the surroundings and people considerably.
Kind words are one of them and will never be regretted.
How much Words Reflect, too. It's as if they hold that magic mirror of the Beast's that says "Show Me Gabrielle," as soon as I open my mouth…That's kindly disturbing.
I hope I can grow in speaking well, and speaking gently.  Speaking so that instead of someone feeling discouraged, shoved away or inadequate, they might feel like they've just had a conversation consisting of 'Apples of Gold in Pictures of Silver'.

:: just a few of the many things proverbs has to say on the matter  :: 

'There is that speaketh like the piercings of a sword: but the tongue of the wise is health.' 12.18 

'The lips of the righteous feed many: but fools die for want of wisdom.'  10.19-21

'A wholesome tongue is a tree of life: but perverseness therein is a breech in the spirit.' 15.4

'Pleasant words are as an honeycomb, sweet to the soul, and health to the bones.' 16.24